Citing a Survey in APA Style (6th Edition) | Format & Examples
If you’re referring to your own survey research (and its results), you don’t normally need to use a formal APA Style citation. What you do instead depends on which of the following is true:
- Your survey/results are in an appendix to your dissertation
- Your survey/results are not in an appendix to your dissertation
The survey/results are in an appendix
In this case, just refer to the appendix that contains the survey.
Example: Referencing a survey in the appendix
The survey asked respondents… (Appendix 1).
Overall, the survey showed that men more often… (Appendix 1).
The survey/results are not in an appendix
Since you can’t refer to an appendix, you should instead refer to a “personal communication”. Using this term indicates that the survey/results are not available to third parties – including the reader.
| APA Format | Not included in the literature list. |
| In the literature list | Not included in the literature list. |
| In the text |
|
Personal communicationWe recommend that you always include your survey and its results in an appendix. If that isn’t possible for some reason, you can avoid having to use “personal communication” by going for the Intranet solution.
1 comment
Bas Swaen (Scribbr Team)
December 17, 2020 at 3:30 PMThanks for reading! Hope you found this article helpful. If anything is still unclear, or if you didn’t find what you were looking for here, leave a comment and we’ll see if we can help.